Where We Started From

The time: 1989. The place: Chino, California. (Yes, as in "where Ryan on The O.C. was from".) I had gotten my high school diploma about a year earlier and had recently started my first actual paying job. As soon as I had saved up enough money, I bought my first CD player, in the form of a "boom box" equipped with two cassette decks. Then, after I got my next paycheck and cashed it, I ambled down to the nearby Music Plus store and browsed the CD racks -- CDs shared equal space with records and cassettes back then -- in careful deliberation of which CDs I would choose as the very beginning of what (little did I know) would eventually become a collection of hundreds.

Back then, CDs came in what were called "longboxes": paperboard boxes similar to what CDs are still packaged in at Costco, the same size as the twelve-inch-long theft-deterrent plastic "frames" that eventually replaced them, except there was no window showing the jewelcase inside; instead, the fully-enclosed box was adorned with an enlarged, panoramic version of the CD insert's cover art. And the best part: the jewelcase inside was free of not only a redundant layer of plastic wrap, but also that annoying-as-hell top edge sticker! The longbox is a lost art ... you might find the occasional vintage one gathering dust in an independent store, perhaps with its never-exposed-to-the-open-air CD jewelcase still cocooned inside. For awhile, I had roughly a dozen longboxes adorning my walls --- I would carefully open both ends, attach them to the walls with thumbtacks through only the back panel, leaving the front intact, and then seal the ends back up with tape.

Presented in this post is what, to the best of my recollection, I purchased in that first CD shopping spree. I've listed them in approximate order of certainty, from the ones I'm positive I bought that day to the ones I'm giving my best educated guess on. I'm also drawing on the hazy memory of those longboxes that were mounted on my walls for those precious few years afterward, and (is this cheating?) the copyright dates on the CDs themselves. I know I bought at least four CDs that day, and I know they're ones that have never left my collection. For a while, I had saved the receipts from every CD I bought (Music Plus had these neat computer-printed receipts that showed the artist and title of each purchase), but I eventually threw them all away after I had stopped collecting them. I now wish I had saved at least those first couple of receipts, so that any margin for error in compiling this list could be eliminated. If only I could travel back in time to that day and be sure ... but then, that would probably take away the romantic sense of uncertainty that makes the memory such a fond one....

John Williams & The Boston Pops Orhcestra: "By Request: The Best Of..." -- Like most of the titles in this list, I'd had this one on cassette for awhile and liked it so much that I couldn't wait to upgrade it to the comparatively indestructible and age-defying medium of the compact disc. It's an album full of the greatest themes from Williams' stunning career of music for film ("Star Wars", "Superman", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Close Encounters"), television (the themes from the Olympic games and from NBC News), and elsewhere (a special composition commemorating the Statue of Liberty), showing his unparalleled achievements in orchestral music.

Scott Grimes: "Scott Grimes" -- When he was a teenager and already well into his acting career (after the "Critters" movies but before "Party of Five" and, of course, long before "E.R."), Scott Grimes tried his hand at making a pop record, like quite a few actors do. Although the results aren't the most spectacular -- cheesy late-'80s pop to such a degree that you can almost smell the scent of cheddar wafting from your CD player -- Scott's decent voice (better than most wanna-be rock-star actors) and capable production from Richard Carpenter and Herb Alpert made this CD a keeper, at least to me.

Yanni: "Chameleon Days" -- Okay, stop laughing. Back in the early years of his career, Yanni's music actually had life to it. At this time, there was a new radio station in the L.A. area called "The Wave", which played so-called "New Age" music, and it was there that Yanni's tune "Everglade Run" grabbed my ear and didn't let go. I had to write down the name of the song and the artist, and I picked up the album it was on (this one, of course). Surprisingly, there were a number of cool songs on this album and some of his previous releases, and I eventually became a fan of his ... that is, until he became the king of snooze in the early '90s, which he basically has been ever since.

Leonard Rosenman: "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" Soundtrack -- This was the film that made me a "Star Trek" fan (the film that is the most widely credited with doing so, I've heard), and of course I also loved the music. Rosenman would later lose a lot of respect from me as a musician (dismissing Basil Poledouris' "RoboCop" score as "crap" in a magazine interview, when his own score for the sequel was in fact quite inferior), but I've never stopped liking this album.

The Connells: "Boylan Heights" -- Earlier on in that same year, I had purchased a cassette from a professional mix-tape service called "Personics", which sold songs, from a pre-determined list of a few hundred, for a nominal per-song fee -- just fill out your order form at the kiosk (inside Music Plus, of course), take it to the counter, and in about ten minutes or so, your tape was ready. It was a great thing, considering it was about a decade before CD burners existed! This is how I was introduced to The Connells, a great melodic rock band from North Carolina that would end up becoming one of my favorite groups of all time ... and to think it was only because I couldn't think of anything else I really wanted to fill up the extra space on the cassette! This CD, containing that first song of theirs I chose through Personics, became the first of theirs I bought, eventually accumulating their whole discography.